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Always loved the name of the Curiosity rover, was just reading the wikipedia article, apparently it was crowd sourced from 9,000 proposals and the selected name
by mentos 10y ago
Always loved the name of the Curiosity rover, was just reading the wikipedia article, apparently it was crowd sourced from 9,000 proposals and the selected name was from a 12 year old student. Very cool
"A NASA panel selected the name Curiosity following a nationwide student contest that attracted more than 9,000 proposals via the Internet and mail. A sixth-grade student from Kansas, twelve-year-old Clara Ma from Sunflower Elementary School in Lenexa, Kansas, submitted the winning entry. As her prize, Ma won a trip to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where she signed her name directly onto the rover as it was being assembled.
Ma wrote in her winning essay:
Curiosity is an everlasting flame that burns in everyone's mind. It makes me get out of bed in the morning and wonder what surprises life will throw at me that day. Curiosity is such a powerful force. Without it, we wouldn't be who we are today. Curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives. We have become explorers and scientists with our need to ask questions and to wonder."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover)
- abandonliberty 10y agoI'm very happy that we're involving students and helping increase passion for space. Is it crowd-sourcing when the result is selected? If infinite monkeys give us Shakespeare, 9000 students should generate a pretty dense set of data given student vocabulary. Cynicism: 1. Know what you want to call it 2. Canvass 9000 people 3. Pick the best one that agrees with you (because there must have been collisions)
- BurningFrog 10y agoSounds like the work of Kristen Wiig in The Martian.
- vkou 10y agoIf you know what result you want, why not just have a patsy write your suggestion in, so that you can select it?
- beached_whale 10y agoThis poetry really speaks to me. It could have gone the other way and been named Marszi McMars Rover or something else. It would have been funny, but very uninspiring.
- wavefunction 10y agoBoaty McBoatface situations seem to occur due to "vote on a name" rather than "suggest a name" as the situation with Curiosity appears. Voting implies an outcome defined by what is usually an easily compromisable web-poll, whereas the suggestion-route implies some curation.